The Game of Bear

Peter Bennet’s previous collection, The Glass Swarm, was widely praised for its formal skill, wit, and imaginative reach. The Game of Bear includes a powerful sequence in which timeshifts and colliding settings in Northumberland and Aquitaine enhance the drama of a story of sorcery, murder and demonic retribution, derived from a hitherto uncollected Border Ballad. In the words of Sir Andrew Motion, these poems establish the criteria by which they must be judged.

"Bennet really does know, very precisely, how to contrive the entry of the powers of place and history into his poems without depriving them of idiosyncrasy, surprise, or their darker natures."The Sunday Times

"In the end it’s the eerie, chilly atmosphere that beguiles: Bennet’s at his best writing of ice and shadows and dark water."The Guardian

"... this is poetry that sings." TLS

"Peter Bennet's Northumbria is both seen and felt in the muscular vigour of his language... The ambiguities of language are an active part of the moral and spiritual ambiguities the poems explore... 'Bobby Bendrick's Ride' is a magnificent sequence." Acumen

Peter Bennet lives in Northumberland near the Wild Hills o’ Wanney. He was Associate Editor of Stand from 1995 to 1998, and is a co-editor of Other Poetry. He received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2005 for Goblin Lawn: New & Selected Poems and the Poetry Book Society Choice in 2008 for The Glass Swarm, which was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Both collections are published by Flambard Press.